by
Annie Lord
In ‘The Glass Essay’, Anne Carson goes back to her mother’s house on a moor in the North to try to repair her broken heart. In the poem, Carson remembers a conversation she has with her mum in the kitchen:
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
I don’t want to put it down either. I want to hold onto it until my hand burns. Until the skin peels away in flakes.